At The Edge
by crazy random happenstance
Summary: Life at the Hub is as normal as it can be with the deaths of two teammates: pizza, catching aliens, flirting. No-one expects Torchwood One to be rebuilt, least of all by a single survivor of the battle of Canary Wharf.
1. torchwood three :: jack

_Set post-The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. Is likely to contain spoilers for both that and the second series of Torchwood. _

_**Disclaimer:**__ I own no canon characters or places, nor do I have any claim to any of the Whoniverse. _

_I'd like me some Welsh eye-candy, though. 3_

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Being immortal really wasn't everything it was made out to be.

It had taken Jack a long time to work that out, though. When your line of work involved throwing yourself into near-death situations on a regular basis, and had done for almost a hundred and fifty years, it was generally quite useful to be unable to die. It had certainly served Jack well; the Daleks hadn't been able to kill him, nor had any other aliens, any kind of weapon, suffocation, radioactive materials, explosions…nothing could. Everybody feared death, even if they didn't realise that they did, and Jack could cheat it on a regular basis. The only other person that he knew of who could cheat death was the Doctor, and even he would die eventually; his ability to regenerate would fail him, or he wouldn't be able to do it quick enough, and he would be just as dead as any human. Jack wouldn't be. He could kill, but not be killed. Whatever happened to him, there wasn't anything that could squeeze the life from Jack.

However, almost two thousand deaths later, and Jack was beginning to get tired of being the one to live while everyone around him died. How many times had he found someone he wished to spend his life with, only for them to die in his arms? How many people had he had to 'disappear' on, because they would notice that he wasn't getting older? Friends, loves, even enemies; every time someone he knew grew old, became frail or ill, and he could do nothing but look on, it broke his heart. He might not have been able to die, but his heart could break a hundred times over.

There was a part of Jack that just wished that the next time he encountered someone who wanted to kill him, it would be the last time that he lived through a bullet in the chest, a poison arrow in the back. How much longer could he cope with this before he gave up? Not that he would give up; while he was alive, there was always work for him to do, and he would always want to do it. Torchwood fought for the future on behalf of the human race, on behalf of the Doctor. Jack had to help with that; he knew what horrors would happen in centuries' time, and he couldn't let the people of this planet go into that unprepared. He didn't want to have to kill races from all over the galaxy – they were so spectacular and had travelled so far – and if he could help them then he would do his best, because alien life had just as much a right to be preserved as that of humans; not all of them wanted trouble, some just wanted to find a place to live or friends in this lonely universe. However, if there was the potential of an invasion or threat to the human race, whether that was his friends here at Torchwood, the citizens of Cardiff or the world in general, then he wasn't going to sit back at let that happen. The people here might not have been willing to accept that aliens existed, even with the evidence right in front of their eyes, but that didn't mean that aliens doubted the existence of a planet as large and bountiful as Earth. There were already many races falling through the rift and causing havoc, so who could say what was going to happen when they came here out of choice? Torchwood would be the first to help the human race fight against whatever happened; they were ready.

Yawning, Jack pushed the paperwork he had been working on to the side of his desk, at the same time mentally pushing any thoughts of death to the side of his mind, and put his feet up on his desk, turning his attention to something infinitely less morbid. Wasn't it great to be your own boss? Had he worked anywhere else, in a normal office, for example (although he did like offices, he had to admit. There was something about the photocopy machine…), there was no way that he would have been allowed to do all the things that he did; feet on desks, a shooting range on site, flirting with everyone in sight were just a few of the things he would miss if he ever had to attempt a normal twenty-first century human life. Yet here, he made the rules; he answered to no-one. Not even London, anymore; since Torchwood One had been closed, Torchwood Three had taken the lead, and hopefully London wouldn't want to reopen for a long time yet – there would be trouble if someone tried to order him around now. Captain Jack Harkness really was a captain for the first time since he had taken that title, and he liked it. Maybe he had even earned the rank by now. He certainly thought that he had.

"I'm off now, Jack." Gwen's head popped round the glass door of Jack's office, coat in her hand. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, Jack nodded. It was late, far later than he'd thought it was, and it was about time she went home. After all, she was the only one of the three of them who had a real life outside of Torchwood, and if she didn't work to keep it afloat, who was to say that her marriage would last the year? Jack liked Gwen a lot, and he would have hated for her to lose Rhys because he made her stay late one time too many. "Okay," he replied, smiling as he turned in his chair to face her. "Go spend some time with your husband. It's late – you deserve some time to yourself." That was one thing he could do without; living here at the Hub meant that Jack had all too much time to himself. Still, there was work to do.

Stretching in his chair as Gwen left through the circular door, into the lift that would take her up to the tourist office that was the front for the Hub, Jack picked up the paperwork he had discarded earlier and concentrated his attention on it again. He had all night and it wasn't anything urgent, but the sooner he got it done, the sooner he could concentrate on more pleasant things. Truth be told, he hated paperwork; being out there where all the action happened was what he enjoyed doing most, however dangerous it could be. After all, however many beings he killed in the name of saving the human race (which was a fair few, given how many aliens seemed to want to invade this little lump of rock for some scheme or another), they couldn't retaliate in kind, though God knew they had tried. Yet, however exciting the day's events were, he always had to come back to his office, sit down and fill out some forms or write some reports. Even sharing the bulk of it between himself and the rest of the team left him, as leader, with more than he would have liked. It seemed that paperwork was a necessary evil, and Jack knew evil better than most.

As he dated the bottom of a form, putting down his pen and getting up to file the sheet in the cabinet across from his desk, Jack heard the clink of cups from Ianto's desk. Locking the cabinet, he opened the door and looked out across the Hub to where he could just see Ianto's head over the coffee machine. Didn't he have a home to go to? Usually it was only Jack who stayed at work this late, mainly because he lived here, although he had noticed that the Welshman seemed to have been working a lot of late nights recently. Maybe, unlike Gwen, he didn't have so much to go home for at the end of the day. Jack had to admit that he'd never really bothered to find out; Ianto had always been there when he'd needed him, and that was all that had mattered. Maybe that was wrong, but Jack had never been one to dig deep into the lives of others; living in the moment was far more important, because what else was there to live for? As long as the team worked hard, didn't take any alien technology out of the Hub without his permission and were up for a good time, it had never concerned him what they got up to back at home. But they were his comrades, the people that he loved. Perhaps now was the time to get to know what they did outside of work. And since Ianto was here, that was where he'd start. There was no guarantee that they'd finish the night talking, but they could at least start it that way. Besides, a cup of coffee would probably do him good. And no-one made coffee better than Ianto.


	2. torchwood three :: ianto

It had been a long day's work

It had been a very long day. Ianto had been called at twenty to six this morning by the computer system, telling him that there was an alien reading only a few minutes from his house. Of course, he'd had to go and investigate, and though Jack and Gwen had joined him eventually, by the time they had got there he'd already been scratched on the cheek by the rogue Weevil the system had spotted. And now here he was, almost seventeen hours later, finishing off the admin work that Jack didn't want to do. Not that Ianto minded working so late; what did he have to go back home for? Sure, he had a nice flat just ten minutes walk from Roald Dahl Plass and the Millennium Stadium, but it was just that; nice. It wasn't dangerous and exciting, like the missions he went on with Torchwood, nor was it mysterious and attractive like Jack. Those were the two things that really mattered in Ianto's life; Torchwood and Jack. He didn't have much else to live for now, not since Lisa had died.

There were times when Ianto wasn't sure why he'd tried to save Lisa from the wreckage of Canary Wharf. Deep down, he'd known that she wouldn't have been able to survive the partial Cyberman conversion that she had been through in that invasion, but there had always been just the slightest glimmer of hope. No, it had been more than hope; it had been love. He'd loved Lisa so much, and he would have done anything to save her. She had been the reason that he'd tried to convince Jack to give him a job here after he'd moved back to Cardiff when Torchwood One had been closed, the reason that he'd hidden her in a modified conversion unit in the cellar for so many months. For that time, Lisa had been the reason that Ianto put up with cleaning up the shit of the rest of Torchwood Three's team; she had been what he'd lived for. Of course it hadn't been able to last. She had been a partial Cyberwoman; what had he expected? After she'd been killed, it had taken Ianto a long time to find his reason for getting out of bed each morning.

He had found it now, though. Ianto loved his job, loved the people he worked with. The hours might have been long and he might have been nothing but a glorified tea boy for a year, but he wouldn't have changed it for the world. It was better than working for Torchwood One, and even better now that he had been promoted to fieldwork; instead of staying at the Hub, clearing up old pizza boxes and washing empty coffee mugs, he got to go out with Jack and Gwen, doing exactly the same things as they did. It was great, it really was. Even on a day like today, when he'd been working for over sixteen hours, and was now winding his way through a pile of administration, Ianto loved it. It was certainly never boring, working for Torchwood. Each day posed a different problem with a different solution; Ianto didn't think he'd ever learned so much, and he knew everything. Almost.

Even with the giant learning curve and the fact that no two days at Torchwood were the same, Ianto did need coffee to keep him going when he'd been awake this long. If there was one thing Ianto could do better than anybody else, it was make a good cup of coffee. There wasn't anyone else in the Hub who he would willingly let near his coffee machine; it might not have been fighting aliens with big guns, researching the properties of an artefact or mending a wound in time, but it was his domain. And there was nothing like the smell of coffee to make a working day easier. If he didn't work for Torchwood, Ianto rather thought that he would have ended up working in a café or something, although that wouldn't have held the appeal or glamour of a career like this one.

By the time Gwen left for the night, leaving him and Jack as the only people left in the building, Ianto had finished off the work that had been piled on his desk; he had become extremely efficient at getting the admin work done since Jack had recruited him, it being his second-least favourite task to do. His least favourite, of course, was having to clear up after everybody, but that had improved tenfold now; everyone took responsibility for their area of the Hub, which certainly meant that it was only a few stray coffee cups that Ianto had to search out at the end of the day. Ah yes, coffee. His train of thought had strayed slightly as he'd waved goodbye to Gwen, and now he concentrated again on the coffee machine, going through the motions that were, by now, almost automatic, brewing himself and Jack a cup of industrial strength coffee, a special blend invented by Jack himself.

"Ianto!"

Sometimes, Ianto wondered if Jack was telepathic. It certainly seemed that way, with the way that whenever Ianto's thoughts were based around his boss, Jack seemed to call for him. For all he knew, it could be true; even Ianto knew so little about the Captain, and he knew him better than most. After all, the man couldn't die; what was there to say that he couldn't read thoughts too? Nothing would surprise Ianto now, not after everything that he'd seen. In fact, telepathy would be far more normal than a lot of the things that he had encountered. Strange, yes, and slightly scary, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary for a Torchwood officer.

"Ianto, get that nice little ass of yours in here!" Ianto rolled his eyes as Jack hollered again; apparently, if he _was_ telepathic, Jack couldn't hear the fact that Ianto was just pouring some coffee and had been on his way to Jack's office anyway. However impatient Jack was, he would just have to wait just a little while more; good coffee took time to make, and though Ianto had the art perfected, he couldn't speed up the percolator.

"I thought you'd like some coffee," Ianto said a couple of minutes later, setting two mugs down on Jack's desk and shutting the door of the office behind him. "Industrial strength, as usual." He smiled, seating himself on the edge of Jack's desk. "What did you want?"


	3. torchwood one :: felicity

It had taken Felicity Hunter a long time to rebuilt Torchwood One from the disaster that had been dubbed the Battle of Canary Wharf, where she had been one of about thirty (for even to this day, nobody knew exactly who had escaped the horrors) of the hundreds of employees to survive. Once she'd decided that it wasn't right for London to be without protection against alien invasion (after all, how many times had the capital city been targeted in recent years?), she'd had to first gain permission from the government and Prime Minister. It was at times like this that she wished Harriet Jones was still in power; there had been a lot wrong with the woman in Felicity's view, but at least she had been very aware of alien life and extremely proactive in enabling Torchwood to do its job. This man, a balding, middle-aged bore, was far less enthusiastic, but finally the case had been referred as high as it could go; to Her Majesty the Queen. There had been a short period of time when Felicity had thought that Her Majesty wouldn't grant permission for Torchwood One to reopen – it had been her that had ordered its closure in the first place – but eventually, five months after she'd first come up with the idea, permission had been granted. The only conditions were that it remained small – the number of personnel would never be allowed to reach the heights that it had done in previous years – and ultimate control of Torchwood remained with the Cardiff branch, a former outpost of the larger Torchwood One.

All the work she had had to do had meant that Felicity was no stranger to early mornings and late nights, and so tonight, despite the late hour, was pretty average for her. However, despite the long hours and the hard work, Felicity was proud of herself; she had been a senior researcher, managing a team of at least twenty juniors, with the old Torchwood One for years without promotion, and now she would be able to be her own boss. Well, excepting the leader of Torchwood Three; whoever they were, they had ultimate control, and that wasn't something Felicity was all too pleased about. She couldn't contest it, because it had been a condition of the rebuild, but the last thing she wanted was to have to answer to some Welsh twit who had suddenly come into power after the battle in London. He probably didn't even know how to scan for alien technology; she knew these Welshmen. Give them a gun and one tiny, insignificant alien artefact and they decide that they're qualified to run Torchwood. Well, she was going to find out who ran Torchwood Three, and she was going to tell him differently. Felicity wanted to be in charge; she had worked so, so hard for this. If there was going to be someone all the way out in Cardiff who was a higher authority than she was, was all the hard work she'd put in really worth it?

It wasn't that Felicity had a problem with authority, because she didn't. She was well aware that there was always going to be someone who was your superior. It was just…this was Torchwood _One_, based in London; it was the most important, and always had been. How long had she been important, but not important enough? She was the only one who had had the initiative to protect this city from alien invasion again, and therefore surely it should have been her who got to be responsible for it? It was all very well saying that whoever ran the Cardiff branch was the _de facto_ leader, but she wanted that; she had coveted the director job from Yvonne Hartman for so long, had worked so hard…she deserved it. What did they have in Wales that made that branch so much more important anyway? Sheep?

Taking a sip from the coffee mug that was sitting on a corner of her desk (on a coaster, it had to be added; Felicity liked things to be neat and tidy where she worked. She couldn't abide things to be out of place), Felicity pulled the keyboard of her computer towards her. She didn't like being in the office this late at night; she had only had the premises for around a week now, and it was still feeling so bare and lifeless. It could get quite lonely, really, and that wouldn't change until she got around to hiring herself some personnel. That was going to be a difficult task in itself; of course she'd start off with approaching those who had survived Canary Wharf, but she supposed that many of them would probably decline the offer because of the memories. God knew that the memories were awful, even for Felicity.

She didn't even want to think about it now, though as hard as she tried to block the memories out, she couldn't help but hear the words _'you will be upgraded'_ at the back of her mind. Who could forget that? Most of her colleagues – some of her friends – had been 'upgraded', or else exterminated. She wasn't entirely sure what was worse: becoming a Cyberman, stripped of all emotion, or being killed outright. Probably the latter, she decided; at least then you were dead, instead of having to go through so much pain to end up as nothing more than a glorified robot. Nobody had survived the conversion process, she knew that; the only people to have survived were those who had run and hid as soon as the screaming had started. It had been a cowardly way out, Felicity knew that, but beneath her desire for power and her forthright way of getting what she wanted, she was nothing more than a coward, just as every human being was. Whether it was conscious or not, they had a desire to cling to life for as long as they could regardless of others, even if it was just with the tips of their fingers, and no more than thirty of them had managed to do that. Felicity didn't know exactly who they were, even to this day, and it was likely that she'd never be entirely sure. There had been so much chaos, so much devastation, that it had been impossible to account for everybody.

"Stop it," Felicity chided herself. There had been so many nights over the past few years when she had been unable to sleep for the memories, but finally, she had found something to occupy her mind, to make her forget; rebuilding Torchwood One. It was a different place, in a different building, and would be run differently; therefore it was almost as though it was a different organisation. It would be, with _Cardiff_ in charge. Ah yes, Cardiff. Before her train of thought had been interrupted by the memories that she forced herself to forget, that was what she had been thinking about. If it took all night, she was going to find out who ran it, and let him know that she wouldn't be following any orders from some stupid Welshman, even if Torchwoods Two and Four would. Draining the last of her coffee, Felicity looked up from where she'd been running a basic search on Torchwood Three – with a lot of data and files lost in the battle, she had had nothing to hand that had told her anything about anyone who had worked there in the last two hundred years. "Can someone get me another—" she began, then looked around the room. Empty. There was nobody here except her. That was the story of her life recently; no friends, no lovers, no family. Just her, all on her own.

Well, it seemed that Felicity wasn't going to be having another coffee this evening unless she wanted to venture out into the cold, dank kitchen that could be found on the ground floor of this somewhat dingy office block. She would have to get it redecorated at some point; Torchwood was all about technology, and she couldn't be researching that in a place that looked like some backend call centre. Putting her mug down, Felicity frowned at the screen. How was it that she couldn't find any information on Torchwood Three at all? She had the software to bypass firewalls, computer security, database restrictions, and yet there was something blocking her from accessing the files of Torchwood Three's personnel. This wasn't something that she had expected; it told her that there was someone in Cardiff who was cleverer than she had anticipated, because they had managed to limit her access. Hm. This left Felicity with a problem.

For several minutes, Felicity drummed her fingers impatiently on her desk, waiting for an answer to pop into her mind. This was the sort of information that she should have had access to the minute she decided to reopen Torchwood, and failing that, it should have taken the programs on her computer no more than a couple of minutes to dig into Torchwood Three's files and draw out the profile of the leader. She tapped her fingers again, managing to break a nail. It was as she rooted around in her desk drawer for a nail file, rummaging under empty CD cases and hand-written notes that she remembered something one of the more proficient coders had written several months before the battle of Canary Wharf. It was a program that far surpassed any search engines that Felicity currently had to hand, digging deep into hidden files and breaking its way into even the most secure computers, and would be perfect for what she was trying to achieve. She'd even seen a CD with it on in one of the piles of paper that lay around the office at the moment. The only problem was that it had never got past the beta stages of testing; it had never been put into practise and there was no way of telling if it would work perfectly or simply tear her computer system to shreds. It took Felicity only a moment to come to a decision, and then she almost leapt from her chair, rummaging in the nearest piles of paper until she emerged triumphant, a plastic CD case in her hand. After inserting it into her computer and clicking 'run', there was only one more thing for her to do while she waited for the results; get herself some more coffee.

A dialog box was flashing on her screen when Felicity arrived back from the kitchen (which had been as cold and damp as she'd thought it would) with a mug of strong black coffee in her hand. Tentatively, she clicked it; it was entirely possible that the program had failed and she would have to go to Cardiff herself in order to find out who ran Torchwood Three, and that was something that she really did not want to do. "Current personnel, Torchwood Three, Cardiff," she read aloud, a huge wave of relief rushing through her. Three profiles were visible on her screen – only three? Gosh, that was an awfully small unit to be in charge of the whole Torchwood Institute; another sign that London needed to regain control as soon as possible to avoid the loss of integrity of the whole organisation, in Felicity's eyes. Still, where was the name that was important to her? Ah yes, a Captain Jack Harkness. Captain? Pfft, he was probably some fisherman who thought that just because he'd been on a boat a couple of times it automatically made him a Captain, or else an ex-military man who had been promoted a couple of times but never really achieved anything. Well, she'd soon set the record straight; Captain Harkness was going to find himself with a late night phone call to attend to.

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_A/N: Sorry for the slight delay in getting this chapter up. Thanks to everyone who's been reading my story, and I really would love some more reviews, even if it's just a comment to say that you've been reading. Thanks!_


	4. torchwood three :: gwen

Special Ops. It had been easier when it had been Special Ops.

It wasn't that Gwen enjoyed lying to Rhys, because there had been so many times since she'd begun working for Torchwood that she'd wished she could tell him what she really did for a living, but sometimes, the bombardment of questions that she received was too much to handle. Generally speaking, Rhys' knowledge about Torchwood was on a strictly need-to-know basis; if she was particularly flustered or worried about something, she could tell him, and equally he did like to enquire how Jack was (Gwen could sense the testosterone levels in the room rising as soon as her boss' name was mentioned), just to check that he wasn't doing anything unprofessional, but other than that, she kept her work life at work. However, it seemed that the reason for Gwen being late – especially this late – was something that Rhys _needed_ to know.

By the time she had finally left the Hub, Gwen had wanted nothing more than to come home to her flat, pour herself a glass of wine and lie in front of the telly for a few minutes before collapsing into bed. And of course, she'd wake up tomorrow, having had less than the amount of sleep she really needed, to Rhys' complaints that she must be due a day off soon, and do it all again. Although she loved working for Torchwood and knew that long days were a part of the job, just as having to take extra shifts had been when she'd been in the police, a part of Gwen agreed with Rhys. Since her honeymoon, she'd had no days off at all, and she was seeing less of Rhys than ever before. With Tosh and Owen gone, and no-one to replace them yet (Martha had been offered Owen's job, but her fiancé hadn't been able to transfer from London and she didn't want to leave him, and Jack hadn't found anyone else suitable since), she, Ianto and Jack had had to work twice as hard to keep up with everything, and that inevitably meant some late nights. Admittedly, this was the latest yet, but she had been busy writing a report and had become so involved that she'd not noticed the time until she'd finished.

Rhys, however, had noticed the time. When Gwen had come into the living room of their flat, as quietly as she could in case he had given up waiting for her and gone to bed, he had been sitting on the sofa, a beer in his hand. "You missed Wife Swap tonight," he said, hardly looking up as she dumped her bag on a chair. "And Big Brother. The fat girl beat up the blonde one and the bloke with the safety pin through his ear broke a camera and got kicked out. There's some lasagne in the oven, but it's probably dried out by now." Real life: that was what this was. Coming home from work to a husband that had spent all evening lying in front of the television watching whatever was broadcast, cooking shop-bought lasagne and making a big show about the fact that he had made it from scratch. Real life was spending time with the one you loved, moaning about the little things and completely ignoring the big ones. Torchwood wasn't real life.

Sometimes, it was hard for Gwen to make time for her home life. She knew that she owed it to Rhys; he had put up with shit from her over the last year and he hardly ever complained, but it was so hard to drag herself away from the world that was Torchwood. The hours were long, that was true, but it wasn't that that kept her there so long. Jack had told her so many times that she shouldn't neglect her home life – gone as far as ordering her to make sure she wasn't losing it, in fact – but it was difficult when her home life fell into the category of the mundane. Today at work, for example, she'd spent most of the day trying to track down a rather elusive piece of alien tech. Eventually she'd found it holed up in a storage unit off Penarth Road, but it had taken even longer to convince the manager, who'd insisted on trailing her from the moment she'd set foot on site, that she was authorised to remove this particular item. When she'd finally brought it back to the Hub, she'd spent all afternoon trying to figure out what it did, with some rather unhelpful comments from both Jack and Ianto, and had eventually come to the conclusion, after attempting to press every button and run all sorts of scans on the thing, that it was just a piece of junk that someone had chucked out. She'd then had to write a report it, to be stored in the archives, and that was what had got her so involved at work. She didn't want to have to come home and listen to Rhys wittering on about some inane reality TV show, and she didn't want to have to answer his questions. She was glad – for the most part – that Rhys knew about Torchwood now, but that didn't mean she wanted to discuss it every hour of the day.

"I'm sorry I'm late, Rhys," she told him, coming to sit by his side. She was; for all its tediousness, this was the life she had led before Torchwood, the one that would always be there for her, no matter what happened. Even if she got fired and therefore retconned, Rhys would always be there for her. She needed to spend more time with him, or else her marriage would fall apart before it had even begun. After all, she was the only one to have a long-term relationship; Jack and Ianto had each other, but she had no idea if it meant anything more than sex. Rhys would be relieved if he knew about them, though; he seemed to think that there was something between Gwen and Jack other than the innocent flirting that went on at any office, and while it was true that Jack was handsome and attractive in his mysteriousness, it was Rhys that she loved, and always would be. Her husband didn't have anything to worry about on that score; Gwen had done with being unfaithful. Rhys deserved to have as much honesty as she could give him.

"What was it this time, then?"

Gwen sighed. Need-to-know basis? Yeah, right. Need-to-know if she was extremely late home, anyway. "I was writing a report." She smiled as Rhys rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to whatever programme it was that he was watching (Gwen didn't watch that much television these days and she hadn't been able to recognise it yet). "Just a report, Rhys. I really am sorry, though. I didn't mean to stay so late." There were a few moments of silence as Rhys considered this, pretending to be interested in the commercials that were now showing on the television. Gwen wasn't fooled by this, if only because the advertisement showing was for women's car insurance.

"Well, don't be so late again, alright?" he conceded eventually, switching off the telly and draining the last of his beer before throwing the can in the bin. "Come to bed now, love?"

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_A/N: Sorry to anyone set with alerts for this story who got two for this chapter. I spotted a mistake and had to reupload. Thanks again to everyone who's reading and reviewing!_


	5. torchwood three :: jack & ianto

"How about a drink?" Jack suggested. It was unusual for him to want anything alcoholic; usually, he was quite happy sipping from a glass of ice-cold water while his friends had a beer or wine or whatever, but it was late and he was with Ianto – what was there stopping him? "And I don't mean coffee," he added with a grin as Ianto got up from where he had been sitting to pour them both a scotch. Ianto had known all too well what Jack had meant; if he wanted coffee, he usually yelled across the Hub at the top of his voice, whereas a polite suggestion like this meant that it was a more intimate situation, and therefore coffee wasn't always appropriate. A smile was on his face as he set out the glasses and opened the decanter (an old-fashioned thing, but Jack seemed to like it), although as his back was towards Jack, he wasn't sure the Captain could see it.

"Um, y'know…" Jack continued, leaning back in his chair as Ianto slipped the lid back into the decanter and approached him with the glasses.

"Yes?" Ianto questioned, almost certain he knew what was coming. There was only one thing that could make Jack almost hesitant, and that was the social niceties of the twenty-first century, at least where the Welshman was concerned. Perching on the edge of Jack's desk, he waited for the man to just come out at say it, trying to hide the smile that was creeping across his face. It was good to know that there was _something_ that made Jack squirm, because he seemed to be brilliant at everything.

"We should go out for a drink sometime. You and me. Someplace nice," Jack finished eventually, suddenly finding the papers on his desk extremely interesting. He had seen so much, done so much – fighting aliens, spending centuries waiting for the right doctor to come, living through thousands of deaths – and a simple thing like asking someone out was the one thing that completely floored him. It was strange, really, for someone as charismatic as he was; he had no problem flirting with anything and everything, and certainly no problem shagging Ianto, but when it came to doing things the right way…it was hard. Going the wrong way about things was so much easier. And fun.

Ianto couldn't help but smile as he perched on the edge of Jack's desk, holding out a glass to him while sipping from the other himself. "Another date?" he asked, unable to help teasing Jack ever-so slightly. "You're becoming a romantic in your old age, Captain." He wasn't going to let him know it, but Ianto liked doing things the traditional way with Jack. Of course what they had was great and he wouldn't have changed it for the world, but going on dates, worrying about what to wear and say and what to do if the other person asked you back to their place after dinner…that was normal. It meant something concrete; Ianto wasn't sure what his relationship with Jack was, whether it was more than casual sex or if it'd end as quickly as it had started, but actually going out gave Ianto a better idea. Besides, he was a traditionalist in so many ways. Dating was the traditional way to start a relationship, and it was better late than never.

At Ianto's comment, Jack slapped him playfully on the leg, but he was wondering if it would have been better to keep his mouth shut and continue with the great sex and stolen kisses that they already had when Ianto said, "Yes, okay. It'll be nice." It took Jack a moment to register the acceptance before he spun in his chair to face Ianto. For the first time since he'd been brought the cup of industrial strength coffee an hour or so ago, Jack really looked at Ianto. They'd spent a long time talking, partially about Ianto's home life (although it had taken a while for him to be able to open up enough to let Jack know anything) and a lot about Torchwood, but Ianto had been sitting in the half dark, the side of his face away from Jack completely clouded in shadow. Now that he was sitting this side of the desk, the light shining on his face, Jack could see a large red cut, a new wound from the look of it, running the length of Ianto's cheek.

Jack reached up, stroking a thumb along the welt. "That's a nasty cut you've got there," he commented. Ianto winced at Jack's touch, but shook his head; it wasn't that bad. "It's fine," he replied, though he knew that Jack probably wouldn't agree with him; it seemed that Jack could be slightly overprotective when it came to his team's injuries. However, the truth was that it _was_ okay; when you'd been buried by an exploding building, nearly eaten alive and practically exterminated by Daleks, a little cut on the face wasn't anything major. Still, Ianto certainly couldn't complain about Jack's thumb gently stroking the side of his face – nor did he want to. It always surprised him when Jack, usually so loud and brash, was gentle and sensitive, but it seemed that it was so often the case that Jack was calmer when the two of them were alone. "Really, Jack, it's okay," he reassured the captain, although he didn't hesitate to scoot along the desk so that he was sitting close enough to Jack to kiss him.

Which he would have done without a second thought had there not been the peal of a warning alarm from the computer on Tosh's old desk in the main Hub, signifying an incoming call. There was a moment of silence before Jack stood up, kissing the top of Ianto's head as he picked up his glass, moving his way around his desk to see what was going on. If it had been Gwen, she would have called straight to his or Ianto's cell, so it had to be someone else. The problem was, who? Jack didn't know anybody else who would bother to go the convoluted way through the computer system to call rather than just using a phone like everybody else did. At the door of his office, he turned to look back at Ianto, who had got up and was making his way towards Jack. "Go home, Ianto," he said, opening the door as the computer pealed again. "I'll deal with this. Get some sleep. And I don't want to see you in work until at least ten tomorrow." Jack could see that Ianto was about to complain – he was always here before everyone else to make sure that the Hub was in order and to open the faux-Tourist Information office – but he interrupted the protestations before they even left Ianto's mouth. "And that's an order."

Ianto, despite his apparent protesting, was really quite happy to comply with that; he was far tireder than he let on, and the thought of his bed and soft pillows was rather inviting. As he picked up his jacket from where he'd put it on the back of the chair he'd been sitting on, he smiled at Jack. "See you tomorrow," he said, heading out of the cog door. "Don't work too hard."

Jack rolled his eyes – not that Ianto could see. Of course he wouldn't work too hard – he did have a bed here for a reason, but as the computer beeped loudly at him again, he knew that it would be a while before he hit it. This, whatever 'this' was, had to be dealt with first. A few moments and some rapid keystrokes later, Jack had answered the call. He was just about to say something when the clipped tones of a London accent echoed around the Hub.

"Captain Jack Harkness! Stand to attention, sir!"


	6. torchwood one & three :: felicity & jack

"Captain Jack Harkness! Stand to attention, sir!" Felicity's voice ran out across the Hub, echoing in the small space. It had taken her a while to bypass Torchwood Three's security codes, but finally she'd been able to reroute her telephone through to their computer. It had taken the man on the other end a while to answer, though. Felicity tapped her fingers impatiently as she tried to bring up a visual; she was not the sort of person who enjoyed being kept waiting, especially not by some Welshman who probably didn't even know what 'stand to attention' meant. What was taking him so long? The thought that he might not even be at work given the late hour, or might otherwise be occupied, didn't even cross her mind. She was working, therefore he would be too.

The last time Jack had heard those words – those _exact_ words – it had been when the Daleks had moved the Earth. Harriet Jones had used a subwave network to contact them here at Torchwood, and together with Sarah-Jane Smith and Martha, and Rose (how great it had been to see Rose again), they had managed to call the Doctor. But this person wasn't using a subwave network. They weren't even trying to hide the fact that they had hacked into his computer system. Who the hell were they? If there was one thing Jack didn't like, it was people touching his things. And that included his computers. Sighing as he put down his glass, tapping a few keys to bring up a visual of the person who had called him, Jack looked up at the computer screen.

A woman with blonde hair pulled back into a bun, glasses resting on her nose, stared back at him. Her gaze was cool, unwavering; she didn't look shocked to find that the webcam on her desk had been switched on, although there was a faint glimmer of surprise registering in her eyes – Jack could see it. He frowned at the screen, finishing the last of his scotch as he tried, and failed, to place the woman. "And you are?"

Felicity was right; he hadn't stood to attention. However, she'd also been wrong; he wasn't a Welshman. Nor did he look particularly stupid. She wasn't one to bother about that sort of thing, especially not in the workplace, but even she wouldn't have denied that he was a very attractive man. Most definitely not what she'd been expecting. Although her surprise didn't register on her face, it took Felicity a moment or two to recover from finding out she was wrong (because she was never, ever wrong. If she didn't agree with the system, it meant the system was wrong) before she could answer his question. "Felicity Hunter."

"Do I know you, Miss Hunter? Did we have a thing at one point and you just couldn't forget this charming smile?" Not that Jack felt like smiling. If anything, he was extremely pissed off at Felicity Hunter. Who did she think she was, hacking into his computer, especially at this late hour when any twenty-first century human should have been in bed?

Felicity rolled her eyes at this one. Captain Jack Harkness most certainly wasn't anything that she had been expecting, which was nothing if disconcerting. It was always so when you had a clear picture painted in your head of how something should look and it ended up you were looking at the picture upside down. "I should most certainly hope not," she replied in answer to his second question, a thin smile appearing on her face as Jack looked ever so slightly crestfallen. "I'm from Torchwood One."

This floored Jack. Torchwood One had been closed, and rightly so. It was his view that it should remain closed for at least a couple of hundred years after what they had done. The last thing that he had been expecting was for someone to affiliate themselves with the institute in London again. "But…Torchwood One was closed after the Battle of Canary Wharf," he said, trying to make sense of the thoughts that were suddenly swimming through his mind, well aware that his comment wasn't the most eloquent thing he could have said.

"Yes. And now we've reopened."

"You got permission for that?" Jack couldn't believe that the Queen had been willing to allow Torchwood One to operate again. It had been her that had ordered its closure, after all.

"Of course."

"Right. And you've called me because…?" This woman's manner, so calm and reassured, yet also so pompous, acting as if she owned the world and he was going to bow in deference to that just because she was from Torchwood One, annoyed Jack. Torchwood One should never have been allowed to rebuild. It wasn't right; they had gone against everything that Torchwood had stood for – even their own policies, which Jack hadn't agreed with – and brought about so many deaths. So many Cybermen, all over London. It had been due to them that there had been one in his basement too; if Torchwood One had never allowed the Cybermen through the Void, even claiming that they were ghosts, Lisa Hallett would never have been partially converted and her boyfriend Ianto Jones would never have tried to keep her alive by working here. Of course, if Torchwood One hadn't done that, then he would never have met Ianto, and that would have been one of the biggest shames in the universe…still, time to think about that later. Now, he had to concentrate on getting this woman out of his life before she even got into it.

He was going to be difficult, Felicity could tell. "Oh, I just wanted to let you know that since we have reopened, you now have a higher authority to report to, Captain."

"No!" Jack's fist slammed into the desk before he'd even had a chance to realise his hand was moving. After everything Felicity Hunter's team had done, did she really think that Jack was just going to give up and let London be Head Office again? There was no way he was going to do that; Torchwood One and Torchwood Three stood for different things now, had done ever since Jack had taken over as leader. "No way."

It took Jack more than a minute to calm down enough to be able to get words out again. Felicity watched with amusement as he drained the last of his drink, his face taught as he struggled to control this burst of anger. "We are separate from you now," he told her, staring into the woman's eyes on the computer screen. "Independent. We got signed over when you went up in smoke. And nothing in the universe is going to change that."

"The Torchwood branches in Cardiff and Glasgow have always been secondary to that in London. You were allowed control while we regrouped – now that we have, it is only right that London becomes the headquarters again. After everything the Institute there has done—"

Jack didn't allow her to finish what she was about to say. "Everything you've done? Don't you think you've done enough already?"

"Meaning?"

"A Cyberman in every home?" Jack was doing his best not to shout at the woman through the computer, but it was hard to keep his temper when she was so bloody-minded, so blind to the damage Torchwood One had caused. "And you _let_ that happen? Encouraged it, I'd go as far as to say. It's no wonder you were closed down, Felicity. It's people like you who caused the deaths of so many people that day."

Felicity frowned; there were a lot of things that she hadn't expected coming from this conversation, and she didn't like it one little bit. Things were meant to be going her way. Clearly this Captain Harkness wasn't as much of a pushover as she had hoped. Well, if he wasn't going to agree tonight – which seemed more than likely given his reaction – then she would just have to try again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, until he wore down. And if he didn't…well, Torchwood One and Three would be united only in name. She wasn't going to allow renegade outposts if she couldn't make sure they were researching the right thing. Who was to say that Torchwood Three wasn't working directly in league with the Doctor, the one man that Torchwood had been set up to remove from Earth. These idiots in Cardiff could already be working against her, and Felicity wasn't going to let that happen. She would close them down, if she had to, in the same way her Torchwood was closed down. For his sake, she hoped that Captain Harkness would come around to her way of thinking.

"Go home, Felicity, don't bother me again. Next time, I won't be so willing to listen. You have got a lot to answer for and I'm not willing to compromise my team's reputation by coming under the jurisdiction of someone who allowed Cybermen into this world." Without waiting to hear her reply, Jack switched off the computer, cutting audio and visual at the same time, draining his already practically empty glass before leaning back against the computer terminal. "Because I don't trust you one bit, Miss Hunter."

A slow smile spread across Felicity's face as the communication link was cut. "That's not the last you've heard from me, Captain. Not by a long shot."


End file.
